Pages

Thursday, 9 May 2013

Port Augusta in South Australia

For
this fourth week on the road, we headed from Adelaide to Port Augusta. This
small town located in the state of South Australia hosts about 14000 people and
is considered as the gate to the Australian Outback.

To get
there, we took the Ghan (name of our Train). This train is quite special as it
counts 37 wagons making him something like 890m long. Just impressive

Did
you say Port Augusta?

When
leaving Adelaide, we asked ourselves "What are we going to do there ...
and Why do we have even planned a stop there?" ... we are still not quite
sure.

Anyway,
now it's too late to change. We have to spend five days, four nights here and
our Train to Perth is only leaving on Thursday (since there is only one train
per week...).

We
arrive here in the evening. First thing we do is find a camping spot for the
night and some food. The next day, we head over to the nearby Tourism Office
(yeah ... everything is kinda "nearby" there), and got ourselves equipped with some maps.

The
Town of Port Augusta is quite nice. It is so to say planted in the middle of
the outback, right at the end of the Spence Golf. Also, from here we have a great view at the Flinder ranges, a mountain chain of 430km long and 1.170m high that almost
surrounds the place.

BTW,
big thanks to the tourism office that accepted to keep our bags for these four
days. We spend about $70 for the lockers in Melbourne ... Grrrrr.

Going
around the town

During
these five days in town, we got enough time to visit "everything" We
even got some spare time to relax by the waterfront.

The
city by itself is quite nice. It has BBQs in every corners, some parks and a
few supermarkets. Also free drinking water fountains - useful when you are in
the desert!

Meeting
the Dolphins

Port
Augusta is not just that nice little town pictured above. It is also the
Spencer Gulf which goes right into the Great Australian Bight. So here,
dolphins and wales are swimming up the gulf and can be spotted if you are
patient enough.

We
only saw dolphins (twice) but no wales. The season for wales is a little bit
later in June-July.

Next
stop, Perth!

Tonight,
we will be hoping back on the train and head to Perth. Arrival time is
scheduled at 9:30am on May 11th .... 2 nights, 1 day later. Yeay ... 30 hours
on the train!